Jaime H. Herrera

She sits at her makeshift dresser of discarded maquiladora boxes, stares at herself in the mirror, light sound of Juan Gabriel coming from her phone.

The sun is not yet out, and her phone flashlight casts shadows on the blue walls of the room she shares with her daughter, Mariana. Ana goes over and kisses Mariana gently on her cheek and says “Buenos días mi Amor.” Mariana climbs into Ana’s arms and sits on her mother’s lap, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She watches her as she balances the phone with one hand while she applies eye liner with the other.
“Mami chula,” Mariana says as she looks up at her, and Ana buries her nose in her daughter’s hair, smell of sleep and baby shampoo. She closes her eyes, kisses the back of her head and says “Gracias Amor.” She looks at her in the mirror and asks ¿Quien la quiere mucho?” 

“¡Mami!” Mariana says, big eyes framed by her thick lashes.  When Ana looks at her daughter, she feels ready to start her day.

María, having heard the giggles from the other side, pulls back the heavy sarape that splits the room and pokes her head into their side, telling them that breakfast is ready. Mariana jumps off her mother to hug her grandmother.

“Abue,” she says. María puts her warm hands to Mariana’s cheeks and Mariana says “Ummmm” and closes her eyes, her small hands on top of her grandmother’s. 

After breakfast, Ana puts on her favorite black skirt, and over it she puts on her gray smock, her name under the “Motorola” symbol on her chest. She puts her high heeled shoes in her handbag and readies to leave. 

“Gracias mamá,” she says as she kisses Mariana. 

“Cuidado,” her mother tells her.

“Si mamá,” Ana replies as she walks out into the dark. 

Within a couple of blocks, she meets her friend Isela, and they walk the remaining mile to the bus stop arm in arm, a light dust picked up by the dozens of other women who walk the unpaved streets and join them on their way to work, dim lights coming from the few houses homes with a bare bulb outside. 

Ana looks out at their colonia, the unpaved streets, unpainted cinder block houses, some built out of discarded wooden pallets.

As if reading her mind, Isela tells her, “At least we got the pipas to bring water.” 

“And we can borrow electricity from the nearest utility pole,” Ana says, looking up at the tangle of electric cords dangling from the lone utility pole.  They both laugh. 

As the Juárez wind picks up, the women lean into it, making their way to the cluster of rocks that serve to signal the bus stop. 

Isela and Ana get on the same bus to the Motorola plant, where Ana has worked since she got to Juárez from Durango, pregnant with Mariana. 

The driver greets them with “Buenos días muchachas.” He is the one they like, he is the one who does not leer at them as they get on, he is the one who does not greet them with some suggestive comment that makes them wrap their work smocks around themselves.
“Buenos días Manuel,” they greet him as they board. 

As the bus bounces them along, Ana looks out as the sun pokes out from the dusty horizon. She smiles. It is payday, and she and Isela are going out dancing. She dozes off, as do many of the women, and they shuffle off when the bus gets to their plant, where they are joined by hundreds of other women, ant-filing into work. Between making sure she is attentive at her place in line at the assembly plant and fending off the advances from some the male plant managers, the day goes fast. There is a buzz at the plant on payday, as many of the workers can’t wait to go out, and the upper-level managers can’t wait to see the women as they file out of the plant wearing their best outfits and not the drab Motorola smocks. They stay behind just to watch them leave and watch the women walk a leery impromptu fashion runway. 

At five o’clock, Ana clocks out and hurries to the bathroom but is disappointed to find that all of the stalls are taken. She starts to walk out when she hears her name. One of the stalls opens and Isela waves to her. “Ven güey,” she says, and yhey share the stall, taking turns peeing and getting ready for the night out, elbowing each other and laughing as they change out of their uniforms. 

“Chingada. I forgot my earrings,” Isela says.
Ana looks at her and rummages in her purse, takes out a lollipop, a toy dinosaur, a keyring with no keys, hand lotion, three tampons, her birth control pills, and a pack of condoms, arranging all of it neatly on the back of the toilet.

They both look at the items and laugh so hard that the woman in the next-door stall asks if they are ok.

“Here!” Ana says as she pulls out a pair of dangly earrings. “I knew I had them.”

“I love them. May I?” Isela asks. 

“They are yours,” she says. 

They have dinner and watch a movie at one of the nearby malls before they catch the bus to downtown Juárez. They walk and bar hop for a while. They drink club soda, making sure they get a new one each time they sit back down, a trick they learned years ago after one of their friends was drugged and raped after someone bought her a drink. 

They go dance at Cosmopolitan, the club close to the bridge. When they walk in, Ana wastes no time and starts dancing. They both want to have fun, though Isela always jokes that maybe they will get lucky one night. 

A little after 2 in the morning, there is a surge of kids from El Paso, coming to Juárez after the bars have closed on the other side. The noise surges with a mix of English and Spanish.

They overhear one of the boys tell his friend, “Dude, te dije that this place was de aquella.” Ana and Isela look at each other and smile. Isela spots a blond kid she has seen before; he waves at her, and Isela tells Ana, “There’s my lucky Gringo. See you later.”
“Wait,” Ana says. She tells Isela she is going to head home. Isela says she wants to keep dancing.
“Do you have protection? I have those condoms somewhere in my purse.” 

“I am good,” she says and opens her purse to show her.

“Okay but be careful. Tell me all about your gringo on Monday.” They hug and kiss and Ana tells Isela one last time, “Cuidado” as she takes a picture of her with her phone. “Just in case,” she tells her. 

Ana walks out of the Cosmopolitan and into the cool evening air, wrapping her arms around herself, and the searchlights in the sky pull her gaze upward. They seem to be coming from the Juárez side, but from the El Paso side as well. They cross high in the Border sky.

“Maybe the Migra is looking for someone,” she thinks. She can’t tell, so she walks closer to the bridge and sees the sign, “Sintonizador Fronterizo/Border Tuner.” She is looking up when a young woman in a neon yellow vest approaches her and asks her if she wants to talk to someone on the other side. Ana says, “The other side? Sure. Why not.”

“Okay, that microphone is open. Just press the button and start talking.”

She walks up to the microphone and presses the button. 

She says, “Hola.” 

“Hola,” comes the response from the other side. 

She laughs a little.

“What’s your name?” 

“Héctor,” he says, in Spanish. “You?”

“Ana. Nice meeting you.”

“Nice meeting you.”

“Are you from El Paso?”

“Yes.”

“So, you are a Gringo or what?” She laughs. 

“Not at all.” He laughs.

“Do you like El Chuco?”

“It’s boring, but I like it.” 

“Do you speak English well?”

“Yes. You?”

“A little bit. I took it in high school. And I like rock.” 

“Really? Like who?”

“You know, Led Zeppelin, Scorpions, Jethro Tull, groups like that. My favorite group is At the Drive- In. I practice my English with their songs.” She laughs when she says this. “And Juan Gabriel, you know, he touches my soul.”

It is his turn to talk but he is quiet for a little bit and then he says “A mi también. Juan Gabriel.” 

“What’s your favorite song of his?”

“I like “Buenos Dias Señor Sol,” from Del otro lado del Puente.”

It is her turn to be quiet and then she says “Neta?”

“Really.”

“Me too. It’s what I first listen to when I wake up. It puts me in a good mood.” 

“Cool.”

“And the cool video filmed in Juaritos.  Did you see the movie?”

“No.”

“It sucks but it’s worth watching. You think he’s dead?” 

“No way. He’s around. Watching over Juaritos.”

“That’s what I think. His spirit. His music for sure.”

“I believe it.”

“And that fucking cool mural.” 

“Chingonsísimo,” he says, and she notices a slight accent when he says it but she thinks it's cute. “I can see it from the Bridge,” he adds.

“How’s the food over there?”

“Crazy. Taco Bell is not Mexican food at all. Better in Juaritos.”

“The burritos.”

“Yes.” 

The woman in the yellow vest comes to Ana and taps her on the shoulder.

“Listen, Héctor, they are telling me my turn is over. You can cross right?”

“Yes.”

“Come to Juárez. See me at the Juan Gabriel mural Sunday at 2.” 

“Juárez time?”

“Yes. Ana. Don’t forget.”

“Okay bye.”

“Okay bye also.”

On Sunday there’s no line going into Juárez as Héctor drives across the bridge. On the Mexican side, a man waves a red rag at him and helps him park. He gives him a dollar to watch his car.

“Si Señor,” the man says with a slight bow of the head. 

As soon as he turns the corner to the mural, he knows it’s her. She is looking up at the mural, earphones on, her body lightly swaying. He watches her for a little bit before he feels weird just watching her. He calls out “Ana.”

She does not hear him at first, but he gets closer and repeats her name. She turns around, and when she does, he feels as if something has changed, and he feels out of breath. Her eyes take him in, she smiles and laughs and asks “Héctor?”

He pauses and catches his breath and then “Yes,” he says, and she walks up to him and shakes his hand. 

“I am Ana,” she says. “Listen to this song” she says, handing him one of her earphones.

They listen as the lyrics go “Es que sin ti estoy muerto.” He likes the song and asks her the name of the song and she says “Eres,” and he does not understand, thinking she is referring to him, asking who he is, and she laughs and says, no, the name of the song, “Eres” and he laughs too. 

“Hola Ana,” he says after this and everything he thought he was going to say is stuck inside his head and won’t come out, save for “Are you hungry?”

“Yes, very. How about a torta? I know a place. El Coyote.” And she points across the street.

Héctor starts walking across the street and Ana grabs him by the hand and pulls him back just as a car passes in front of him. 

“Cuidado,” she says.
“That was close,” they say at the same time and laugh.
“Ok, now,” Ana says and starts to cross. Héctor hesitates when he sees traffic coming from the other side. She takes his hand and tells him, “Okay, we cross Juárez style Mr. El Paso.”

There is no traffic on their side of the street, so she leads him to the middle of the street, to wait until there is no traffic in the opposite direction, cars passing behind and in front. He looks at her and she pulls him close enough to whisper in his ear, “Close your eyes” and against his instinct he does so, and he takes a deep breath and can feel her right next to him and his breathing is calm. When he opens his eyes, she is looking at him and smiling and she calls him “Inocente.”

The flow of traffic slows and allows them to get to the other side of the street and they cross and go into the restaurant, busy with families eating and chatting, waiters and waitresses bustling. They sit at a booth near the window where they can see the mural and each one orders a torta and a drink. Then she orders a large order of fries, “For both of us,” she says as she squeezes a lime over them, and he looks at her and she says, “Try them” and he does, and his eyes widen as he looks at her and she says, “You see” and smiles.   

“So, you are from El Paso?” she asks and when he says he’s that he is originally from Parral, she laughs so hard some of her horchata drink comes out of her nose.

“You are funny,” she says as she wipes her nose.
“But I am,” he says.

“Parral? Really?”

“It’s true,” he says.

“Okay. Tell me,” she says as she moves her plate to the side and props her elbows on the table and looks at him enough to make him feel shy.

“Bueno, I was born in Parral, but my birth mother gave me up for adoption. An older Mexican couple from El Paso had no children and contacted the orphanage and visited and liked me and here I am.”

“Parral. El ombligo del universo. How old were you?”
“I was only a few months old. I don’t even know where Parral is. What ombligo?”
“You should go. It’s only about five or six hours away by bus. That’s what people call Parral, the bellybutton of the universe or something like that, who knows why. My uncle, El Saico, lives there and that’s what he says, but who knows.” 

“They call him Psycho. Why?”
“I don’t know. He’s always been kind to me. He’s my favorite uncle. My ángel de la guarda, always watching out for me. But what about your mother, the real one?”

“The real one is the one who adopted me. And her husband is my father. I don’t know my birth mother.”

“Are you okay?” Ana asks, taking his hand and petting it so much like a little dog that he laughs.

“Yeah. I’m okay. My parents are good parents. I’m lucky.”
By the time they are finished eating, the sun is setting, and the place starts to empty. They look at the mural in the fading light of day as the mural lights turn on and Juan Gabriel seems to be looking at them. 

“And what about you?” he asks, and Ana says her life is boring and besides the restaurant is closing as the waiter hands them their check. 

“What time do they close?” Héctor asks her.

“At eight on Sundays,” she says.

“Wow. Is it eight already?”
“I will get it,” Héctor says but she has already paid, and he leaves a tip. 

They drive around Juárez. She scoots over on the bench seat of his car and sits close to him and her hair smells of baby shampoo. He likes that and he likes that she does not tell him which way to go, even when he gets lost. He wanders over to the east side of town, and she points to the Motorola plant and tells him that’s where she works. When he asks what she does there, she says mostly boring work and says no more. She asks him if he works and he says no, that he goes to the university and when she asks him how old he is and he says twenty-one, she laughs and kisses him on the cheek and leans her head on his shoulder and he runs through a stop sign. But there is no traffic, and she just laughs. 

“Is it okay if I call you Chente?” she asks.
“I thought Chente was a nickname for Vicente,” he says. 

“But also for Inocente,” she says, “And you are so innocent and so sweet.”
He thinks she is making fun of him but when he looks at her, he knows she is not, and the way she looks at him makes him feel like a Chente.

“Ok. Chente it is, Juárez girl. How old are you?” he asks.
“A much older woman,” she says. “I’m twenty-five. And not so innocent. No Juárez girl is innocent.” She looks at her phone and says, “But right now this Juárez girl needs to go home and get some sleep.”

He wants to take her home, but she says that she can take the bus and he drives back downtown. When he insists again that he would rather take her home, she says, “You see Chente, you are so sweet. Lend me your phone,” she says and enters her phone number under the name “Juárez Girl.” She hands back the phone, gives him a quick kiss, points to her bus, waves, and as she gets on the bus, she yells back at him. “Call me, Chente. I had a great time.”
Long after she is gone, Héctor stares in her direction. And as he makes the trip back to El Paso, in the long line at the bridge, he has the sensation that he has left something behind. 

“How was your night, Ana?” her mother asks when she gets home.
“Bien mamá. I met a sweet boy.”

“Ten cuidado. Those sweet boys are the worst,” and she smiles. “Buenas noches mija.”

Ana goes to her room. Mariana is sprawled out sideways on the bed. She kisses her. Mariana opens her eyes, says “Mami” and falls back asleep. When she comes to bed and snuggles next to Mariana, she can still feel the warmth from kissing Héctor. 

Early the next day, when Isela does not meet her for the walk to the bus stop, her stomach tenses. But it’s Monday, and Mondays can be hard after a busy weekend. Maybe she got lucky she thinks.

When she gets to work and Isela is not there, she asks her line boss if Isela called in sick and he says no. After work she goes to Isela’s house, and even though it is late at night, she knocks. Isela’s mother answers. She is crying.

“Es Isela,” she says.

Ana accompanies Isela’s mother to the local police station. When the police officer asks Isela for a description of what Isela was wearing, she shows her the picture from that night. He looks at it and his face tells her what he is thinking, that what Isela is wearing is to blame for her not coming home. 

Over the course of the week, Ana organizes a group of coworkers and neighbors to look for Isela. They make posters, prod the police to do more, get on local radio stations and television programs. But in Juárez, Isela starts to fade into the many other women who have disappeared. 

Héctor thinks about calling Ana all week long but he doesn’t want to appear too eager, though he is. 

He calls her on Friday.

“Want to go dancing?” she asks before he can even say Hola.

  “Meet me tomorrow at the mural at 10.”

  They go dancing and she leads sometimes, and he sometimes just watches her dance the fast songs and when they dance the slow songs, he can feel her heartbeat.  

Before they leave, she tells him she needs to talk to someone she just saw and when she gets back, she seems upset, and he asks her if she is okay, and she says not to worry. 

As they walk to his car, he asks her if she is hungry, and she looks at him and smiles and that’s all he needs and he says he knows a place to which she laughs and says, “Ok, Chente. Take me to this place.” They get some burritos at a place he knows downtown, and it surprises her that he knows a place. She says between bites of a chile relleno burrito that maybe he is not so innocent after all. 

They go back to the mural, and they neck under Juan Gabriel’s gaze until a police officer comes by and tells them not to be doing that in public. Héctor is embarrassed, and he sees the anger in her eyes when she tells the police officer that he should be looking for missing women instead of harassing them. When the police officer leaves, she cries. 

“I have to tell you something,” she says and tells him about Isela and about what happened and about the Gringo she spoke to at the dance club who knew nothing. When he says he wants to help she cries more and he asks her why she is crying as he hands her his handkerchief and she says between sobs, “Who carries a handkerchief?” and she hugs him. 

  “I want to help,” he repeats.

She says nothing, but then says that he is just so sweet and then, “Maybe you should stay in El Paso where no one gets killed.”
The look he gives her when she says this makes her realize she has underestimated him, and she regrets it. 

“I will meet you here tomorrow morning,” he says and walks her to the bus stop. 

On Sunday he drives over and meets her at the mural. She has a backpack full of flyers and she is holding Mariana by the hand.
“Mijita. Héctor. Héctor, this is my little girl, Mariana.”

Mariana hides behind her mother and Héctor kneels on the ground and holds out his hand and then Mariana peers out and shakes his hand and says, “Mucho gusto Héctor” and he says, “El gusto es mío Mariana.”

They drive around Juárez for most of the day, stopping for seafood downtown where they sit outside on stools, Mariana’s little legs dangling off her stool, as the cook hands them their shrimp cocktails through a window. 

Every place they go, they put up posters with glue that Ana has made herself and she calls it “engrudo” and Héctor says he has never heard the word. 

“I will teach you how to make it,” she says. 

When Mariana falls asleep in the car, and Ana asks Héctor to drop them off at the usual place, he insists on taking them home. Even then Ana says they can walk when the paved streets give way to dirt.
Héctor says, “I am taking you home” and she looks at his eyes and the insistence therein and she says “Okey” and she is pleased he has insisted. 

When they get there, he gets off the car and opens the door for Ana and Mariana.  While 

Ana puts her to bed, he meets Ana’s mother, and she gives him champurrado which he has never had, and he asks if he can have more when he finishes the first cup.

Ana comes back to the kitchen, and she gets some flour and water to make engrudo. “I promised. Sit here,” she tells him and points to the aluminum Carta Blanca logo chair. He sits down and then stands back up again when her mother says “Buenas Noches” and says “Buenas noches Señora. Gracias” and her mother winks at her as she kisses her goodnight. 

“Buenas noches,” mamá, Ana says. “Siéntate,” she tells him, and he sits again. She gets out flour and pours some water into a pot on the stove. “You add the flour and stir it until it gets the consistency of champurrado, like the one you had. But we don’t heat it yet. We have to test the consistency.” 

“How do we do that?” he asks, and she gets some with her finger and sits next to him and smears engrudo paste on his cheek and says, “Like this” and laughs so hard she almost falls out of her chair and Héctor holds her as she rubs his cheek with her hand to wipe it off. Her mother shushes her from the other side and tells her they are going to wake Mariana. 

“Sorry,” she says but the look in her eyes and her smile betray her.
“Okay, now we heat to a slow boil and then it’s done. We put it in jar with a lid and it cools, and we have engrudo.”
She walks Héctor outside and she talks about the colonia, and he says he really likes her, and she knows he has deliberately ignored everything she said to him about the colonia, and she is happy because the things she says about the colonia are best ignored.

He can see the university lights from the colonia, across the river, the highway, the jagged border wall. He points to the campus. She says she would like to study one day and get out of the maquila, and he asks what that is, a maquila, and she tells him. He says she can surely go to school, and she smiles at him and says “Ay Chente.”

On their seventh date they spend an afternoon they go to a hotel near the border.
“I have to tell you something,” they both say as they lay next to each other in bed.
“You go first,” he says.

“Ok. And whatever you do when I tell you is fine. But I want to tell you.”

He wants to hold her hand, but she says “Wait” and pulls it away.

“I was married before. Technically, I am still married.”

“Ok,” he says as he sits up. “What does that mean?”
“Mariana’s father disappeared,” she says.
“He left? Why?”

“No. He disappeared. One day he went to meet some friends at a burger place called Space Burger to discuss business. He wouldn’t tell me what, but the people they were meeting took them someplace and he disappeared along with his friends and that was four years ago, and I have not seen him since and we looked for him, but the police tell me not to have hope that he will appear again. ‘This is Juarez after all,’ they tell me.”
“Are you okay with what we are doing?” he asks her.
“Yes, I am. I know it was not a good business, that it was risky, and he knew I did not like it. I do not think he will be found. I have made peace with that. I like you and what we are doing but I want you to know. I have never told anyone this before.”

“If you are okay, then I am okay as well. I am more okay than I have ever been.”

She reaches out and holds his hand and says “Chente.”
She is quiet for a while and then asks, “What do you want to tell me?”
“It seems silly,” he says.

“Of course it’s not silly” she says.
“Ok. I’m Catholic” he starts, and she laughs and says “Chente, that is silly. I am sorry. I should not have laughed. I was raised Catholic too. It’s fine.”

“No. Seriously Catholic. Before tonight, I had never had sex.”

“Chente, you see how innocent and sweet you are? And I love that I was your first,” she says, and she blushes when she says this. “That sounds terrible, no?”

“No. I am glad I waited for you.”
“Chente, come here. Let me be your second as well,” she says as they move to each other on the bed.
When they are getting dressed, she tells him from the bathroom that she has to show him something and she comes out wearing only her Wonder Woman underwear and does a shy modeling turn for him. He tells her that he loves Wonder Woman as he falls on the bed laughing. She lays down next to him and tells him that it must be her lucky underwear and that her daughter picked it out for her. He tells her that she has some innocence to her too. They fall asleep in each other’s arms until Ana wakes up and nudges him and tells him to take her home. 

One day, Héctor has just crossed the bridge on his way to Ana’s house when he notices a young woman waiting at the intersection. He is a few cars behind at the light but sees that she is dressed for a night out, though it is seven in the morning. She has her hand out, her thumb up, trying to hitch a ride. She is waiting when a driver rolls down his window and motions for her to get in, and just as she steps off the curb, a black Suburban uses the turning lane to make its way to her, tires screeching and stops right in front of her. She jumps back onto the sidewalk. Then the passenger side door opens, a man with a cowboy hat gets out, grabs her, pulls her into the Suburban as she yells and the Suburban drives off, running the light and the door closing as it peels off.

Héctor yells “¡Policia!” at the traffic officer at the corner. He wants to give chase, but he is boxed in, and by the time the light turns green, the Suburban is gone. He looks at the driver next to him, and the man looks over, grins, and shrugs his shoulders as he drives off. The traffic officer whistles to him to move on as he points to the green light. 

When he gets to Ana he is shaking, and Ana asks him what is wrong, and he tells her what happened, and Ana says it happens more often than he would even like to think. 

Late one night, Isela’s mom calls Ana, says that some of the women in the neighborhood found a fosa with some bodies buried in the backyard of an abandoned Infonavit house. She asks Ana if she will come with her to look at the bodies. They go and the bodies are all decomposed and by what’s left, they are told that all of them were men. Ana wonders if her husband is in the pit. One of the forensic experts tells her that identifying the bodies, if they are able to, might take months. She says “Gracias” and she and Isela’s mom leave.

A week later, the police call Ana’s house and tell her that have found the bodies of three women in the desert near Samalayuca, about an hour from Juárez. They say they can take her with them when they go tomorrow, Sunday. She says she can get there on her own.

The next day Héctor picks her up at her house and they drive along the Chihuahua desert to Samalayuca and along the way they pass white crosses interspersed on the side of the highway and he asks her what they are. She says they are for the women and says no more and looks out the window at the passing white dunes. When they get to Samalayuca it is easy enough to find the police in the small town, and she goes up to an officer who seems to be in charge. He directs her to a makeshift tent, and they show her some of the belongings they have recovered, purses, unpaired shoes, cell phones, keys. Ana does not recognize anything and is about to leave when he asks her to take a look at a sealed plastic bag with clothing and as soon as he hands her the bag, she sees the earrings. She points to the earrings and gives him Isela’s full name and when he asks if she wants the earrings, she says no. She goes to Héctor and hugs him as she cries. She asks him to accompany her to Isela’s house to tell her mother.

They go to the house, and she knocks and as soon as Isela’s mother sees Ana she knows and her knees buckle, but Ana catches her, and they take her inside and help her to the sofa. Isela’s mother sinks into the sofa and cries. 

One night he asks her to come to El Paso with him and she says she can’t, and when he asks why she says she can’t cross because she lost her green card. He asks if she can have it replaced and she says no, they took it. “Who took it,” he asks and she tells him that she was in El Paso shopping with an aunt whom she did not know was a kleptomaniac and who took some items and put them in Ana’s purse without her knowing. They got caught when they left the store. They were taken downtown, and her aunt called her uncle in Parral, and he came down and talked to the judge. The judge let them go but told them they couldn’t go to El Paso again and she was mad at her aunt but grateful to her uncle. 

“El Psycho?” he asks her.
“The same one,” she says. She said she liked El Paso and even though Juárez has better Mexican food there was this one burger place called Lucky Boy that sold the best cheeseburgers and vanilla shakes and she said she missed that. 

One Sunday he picks Mariana and Ana up and they go on a picnic at a park behind one of the high schools and it is full of families and children and vendors. He tells her he has lunch packed in the car and when he pulls out the bags with the Lucky Boy logo on it, she hugs him and says that it is silly but that he has won her heart with a cheeseburger and shake. He laughs and they all three ride on the swings and Mariana on the teeter totter and he buys her a red and yellow balloon and when she falls asleep, he carries her to the car. Ana kisses him and tells him it has been the best Sunday ever.

As they drive to her house, she says that people on the other side of the border are innocent and though she says innocent and not naive Héctor knows that’s what she means. She tells him that people on the other side don’t have to worry about water and electricity and the police and the cartels and unpaved streets and about what people on this side commonly referred to as insecurity and women can walk in the streets and not worry about someone trying to pick them up by force and about people disappearing. Héctor tells her he can only understand insecurity as a social or economic construct and that he had never thought of it as an emotional and psychological construct, and says he is sorry. She says it is not his fault and that he is sweet and that’s why she loves him and it was the first time she said she loved him and she said it in Spanish “Te amo” and he understands that means more than I love you but he cannot explain it to people who do not know the language and the culture and he does not need to explain it to anyone. All he needs to know is that that’s how she feels. He loves her too. Her sweetness and courage and love in the face of all the insecurity makes him love her all the more and he knows that with her by his side he could do things he never before imagined, things prosaic and amazing both and he felt at that moment that those lights that first intersected in the night sky and brought them together were lights that had been traveling to bring them together since before they were born and perhaps longer. 

One night she is upset and tells him he likes her because he romanticizes her and wants to save her like all gringos want to but at what cost and he gets mad at her and says he doesn’t need to romanticize anything about her or about them and that he knew he would love her the first time he saw her looking up at the mural dancing to a song in her head. And he says “Te amo” and he feels that shortness of breath he felt the first time he saw her. And she calls him “Mi Chente” and hugs him.

When she goes missing, he first goes to her house, but no one is there and the street in front of the house has not been swept and he knows they are not there. 

He goes to her work and asks the women if they have seen her and they say no and one of them takes him aside and she tells him that there is a rumor that she had been making too much noise about women disappearing and that they do not like that and they may have taken her and he asks her who they are and she just says she cannot talk to him anymore.
He crosses back into El Paso and makes copies of the picture she gave him and puts it on a poster with her information and his phone number and at his house he gets flour and water and a pot and makes engrudo, all the while crying. The next day and all weekend he puts up posters of Ana besides the old ones of Isela and other women. Each day, it is evening when he runs out of engrudo, and he drives back across the border but not without first stopping at her house for signs of her but there is nothing. 

One night he gets a call, and he picks up, but they hang up. They call again the next day, and they tell him to meet them at an abandoned water park in far east Juárez.

As he drives in off the main road, the old sign advertising for La Playita is still there. They said to turn left at the sign, past the abandoned playground and down to the end of the road where the old concrete Olympic pool stood empty now. As he does so, he hears a car start and sees in his rearview mirror a truck following him and he mutters chingada madre but keeps driving.  When he gets to the end of the road there is another truck there and three men beside the truck, and the truck behind him blocks him off and he gets out of the car. Two men grab him by the arms and restrain him. He asks where she is. They laugh and call him a pendejo. 

They make him open the trunk of his car and force him to kneel there. As his knees land on the gravel rocks, he hears the gun cock and then the warm trickle of urine down his leg. He feels the barrel of the gun against his temple and his last thought is of Ana. He hears the rumble of a vehicle coming up the road and the gun is still pressed to his head when another truck barrels down the dirt road and Héctor thinks it stupid, but he notices that the truck is new and thinks the stupid things people must notice before they die.

Before the truck has stopped a man jumps off and yells, “¡Déjenlo. Dice El Saico que lo dejen ir”. He thinks he could not possibly, but he pees himself again as the gun pulls away and he feels the indentation still on his temple from the barrel of the gun and the men tell him to get in his car and never come back. And he feels fortunate to be alive and remembers when he first held hands with her as she led him safely across the street and he knows that she has saved him. 

He drives toward the bridge. 

The line is slow as usual and the shock of what just happened makes him shake and he waves to a street vendor and buys a 7-Up and some chips to settle his nerves. As he sits in line his phone buzzes and he sees JG as the caller and he picks up as the call drops. He does not know if that was her or if it could have been her or if this is just another in a line of cruel jokes made to get him to desist. 

His phone vibrates with a text, “Ombligo. JG.”

At the bridge, the U.S. Customs agent waves him through, and he races home. His parents are asleep, and he showers and changes, packs some clothes and the picture of Ana from his nightstand, a votive candle, and the bootleg Juan Gabriel CD collection she gave him for his birthday. He leaves a note for his parents, “Voy por mi ombligo.”

It is three in the morning when he crosses back into Juárez. He stops at the mural and there is no one around except for the night watchman asleep in his booth, his face framed by the light coming from the little black and white television.  He lights the votive candle with one of the other candles and places it next to one of the posters of Ana. He looks up at Juan Gabriel and he remembers they joked about Juan Gabriel and that first night and how he looked down at them.

“He blessed us,” Ana had said, and he laughed then but he is not laughing now. 

He does not believe much in the church anymore, but he makes the sign of the cross and says a Hail Mary and when he looks up in the border sky, he sees the Border Tuner lights and he does not believe much in omens, but he can clearly see that the light coming from El Paso is shining south, where he is headed. 

Then he walks back to his car, gets in, puts on “Amor Eterno” by Juan Gabriel, and starts on his way to Parral.